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Topic: Will NASA plan to put a crew on EM-1? (Read 4011 times)

Please note that the question is whether it will become policy to place a crew on EM-1, not whether such a flight will actually occur. Should a decision to crew EM-1 be announced and later rescinded, it will nevertheless count as a decision to crew. Similarly, should a decision to crew later be changed to a decision to crew with either a more ambitious or less ambitious trajectory, it will count as originally announced.

The poll will close on the announcement of a decision one way or the other, should such announcement occur before the poll's expiry.

I voted yes because I think someone [1] will decide to put it in the plan because it sounds impressive [2] but I'm more skeptical about it actually happening [3].

[1] I'm not being coy about who, there are multiple players that could decide it's the appropriate bold move to make a statement about American HSF and the road to BEO.[2] I'm not judging the actual impressiveness one way or another.[3] In the end I'm not sure it will fit in with with all the moving pieces of the evolving plan.

I'm going for "Yes - circumlunar." If NASA wants the relatively large budget that the president has offered (a cut of only about 5%, as opposed to much larger cuts for most non-defense discretionary spending), it needs to provide something of political value, and a flight around the moon before the next election could be just the thing. Safety concerns will be addressed (inadequately, though perhaps accurately, in my view) with "Well, it's safer than STS-1."

Whether the mission actually flies or flies by 2020 is another question, but in the meantime NASA has much to gain by playing the game.

The thing about STS-1 was that there was no way to do the mission without crew, so it's not a like-for-like comparison.

I do get the arguments about perceived political value and budget concerns, but I expect the detailed assessments to be based on more engineering and proper safety risk analysis. I don't see things being glossed over in this post Challanger and Columbia world.

So if they do come out with a yes recommendation then I must be too naive!